Tag Archives: learning from experience

You have become a part of a tradition that goes back more than 20 years. Bob Clasen, Professor at UW-Madison and I, as state consultant for gifted programs at the Department of Public Instruction began recognizing the top scorers in Talent Search on the UW campus in 1989. I’m proud that 23 years later you have been invited to the University of Wisconsin to celebrate your interests and successes. I join you in letting the world know, “It’s good to be smart.” Thank you to WATG for honoring you and your parents and guests.

It would have been my delight to be with you this weekend, but I am making my way home from a vacation in the Bay Islands, Honduras with my grandsons, ages 6 and 9.

Jordan loves writing. Here he got to write on the table!

As they leave to travel to Colorado, I am thinking of you – our future in Wisconsin.

Benj has a new passion: snorkeling. He’s discovered the wonders of the underwater world.

Have any of you been reading the young adult novels by Terry Pratchett? I enjoy the wit and wisdom as well as the many links to literature and life in Pratchett’s books. From A Hat Full of Sky, I share this thought with you today: “With balloons, as with life itself, it is important to know when not to let go of the string. The whole point of balloons is to teach small children this.” As you continue to develop your talents and realize your dreams, always remember when NOT to let go of your strings!

On May 13, one month to the day after psychologist Sharyl Kato and I did a presentation for our 500-member Rotary Club on early learning in honor of “Week of the Young Child,” The New York Times printed an article entitled, “Fast-tracking to Kindergarten?” I certainly hope, and believe, that our audience knew that Sharyl and I were suggesting no such thing. To say this article is disturbing to me is putting it lightly. From this blog, it is clear that I am someone who believes in the importance of early childhood learning, so why am I loathing what I read? Because it tells the story of a 3-year old child being reprimanded by a teacher for sloppy writing. Because the children in these preschools are being forced to learn, sitting with workbooks, and being given homework. “Age 3 is the sweet spot,” said a leader of one of these organizations that tutor small children. He continues, “If they’re out of a diaper and can sit still … for 15 minutes, we will take them.”

I’m glad my point of view was expressed in the article by Kathy Hirsh- Pasek, a psychologist at Temple University and the author of “Einstein Never Used Flash Cards.” Kathy states, “When you’re putting blocks together, you’re learning how to be a physicist.” When you’re learning how to balance things and calculate how tall you can make your building, you’re learning how to be a physicist. Having your kid drill and kill and fill in worksheets at 2 and 3 and 4 to the best of our knowledge so far does not give your child a leg up on anything.”

Some people, thankfully not too many that I personally know, get the wrong idea that because I wrote a picture book entitled, Grandma Says It’s Good to Be Smart, I am promoting ‘pushing’ young children to learn. If you look at the illustrations in the book and listen carefully to the message, it’s clear that I am in Kathy Hirsh-Pasek’s camp. Early learning is about talking, exploring, experimenting, imagining, asking questions, and doing all the things that just come naturally. A child in the book dances with her imaginary friend. A boy builds with his erector-set-like blocks. He hangs upside down from a tree. She imagines horses flying through the sky. Grandma asks them what if.. and other open-ended questions.

Early learning is about reading with your children, and sharing a love of books. It’s about catching young children in the act of noticing something they love and encouraging their curiosity about the world around them. It is encouraging their questioning with more questions as well as a search for answers. It’s helping them to dream about all the things they can be when they grow up and knowing that they can follow those dreams.

Early learning is not a fast-track to kindergarten or college. It’s about establishing a life-long love of learning. I’m not against early admission to kindergarten or college if it’s right for the individual child. But early learning is good for all children. Learning to value their talents and abilities is good for all children. Realizing that learning is fun is good for all children. Fast-tracking is good for some. Negative feedback, dull workbooks, and sitting still for inappropriate lengths of time is good for none.

In December 2010, Royal Society Publishing reported on a study completed by 8- and 9-year old scientists under the tutelage of a neuroscientist from University College, London. This morning, I was talking with a colleague about a mentoring program we ran for middle school students at WCATY. This conversation reminded me of the “Bee Study” and the role of mentors in encouraging young learners to pursue their interests.

In a commentary accompanying the children’s scientific report, a scientist wrote, “The perceptual and decisional abilities of insects [bees] are … shaped as successful responses to environmental challenges. The same can be said of the children who carried out this research. The resulting article is a remarkable demonstration of how natural scientific reasoning is for us. The insatiable curiosity that characterizes childhood, combined with … scientific method, provides a powerful tool that allows us to prosper and grow.”

Our WCATY scholars and their mentors made similar observations. One student’s story shows how building on early curiosity ultimately defined his personal and career goals. Sebastien reports, “During middle school, I participated in a program that provided a stipend for me to do a mentor-guided project over the summer. That was my first introduction to hands-on, scientific research. I studied the effects of a virus on chick-embryo development with a biology professor at the local college. In retrospect, I recall almost nothing of my actual research at this young age, but I remember the lab and the excitement of doing research vividly.”

He goes on to say, “The summer before my junior year of high school, I became involved in biological research again, this time studying lighting effects on plants… I received a grant through the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to work with Ph.D. candidates in plant genetics. I had this full-fledged research experience. That’s when I knew for sure that genetics was my life. That is also why I entered the Siemens Westinghouse competition in science. My [lab] partner and I had pages of graphs and scientific results, and the next step was to figure out how to develop a bibliography and put together a scientific paper. From there we became regional finalists, regional winners, and went on to Washington, D.C. to become national semi-finalists against fifteen other teams and six individuals, the best of the best in the nation.

“I was never a person who as a child said, ‘Wow, I’ve got passion,’ but now people tell me I have it, and I guess that’s true. Passion is about things having a greater purpose. For me, a career in clinical genetics will be a way of giving back. It will be a way to honor all the mentors and people who have helped me, starting with my mom. So it’s more than love.”

Postscript: Last time I talked with Sebastien, he was in medical school pursuing his career goal, as determined and happy in his direction as ever.

Did you know that 1 in 4 adults did not read a book in the past year? Worse yet, 50% of adults are unable to read an 8th grade level book. According to the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 37% of 4th graders and 26% of 8th graders cannot read at a basic level. Reading statistics are grim.

Children learn to read by example. If they see you reading, they will want to read too. Reading to infants establishes a pattern, or habit of reading. Soon, they will be able to read to you. They can then be introduced to more complex literature if someone simply helps in selecting books they can understand and discuss but not tackle alone. By the teenage years or even earlier, students’ growth should start signaling that the oral reading years are coming to an end. As a parent, when that happened I independently read books that my sons recommended to me. Thus we continued to discuss concepts, share ideas and feelings, and enjoy reading ‘together’ until they left the nest. In fact, we still share titles, give each other books as gifts, and discuss mutually-read books today.

An interest in books may be encouraged through regular visits to the public library. Some smart children have an inherent respect for books from infancy on. Others need to learn this respect through careful instruction on how to treat a book. You will recognize your child’s natural tendencies and thus be able to guide him or her according to individual needs. Little children develop responsibility, as well as awe for storytelling and knowledge acquisition, by picking out their own books, taking them home, reading them (with and without you), learning to treat them with care, and returning them for another set of tales and experiences.

Although books may be attained at no cost through the library, it is good for the blossoming reader to start developing a personal library as well. Children’s books vary in expense. Books can be purchased at garage sales, book swaps, and used bookstores at a very small cost compared to the value of the investment. The possession of some books that can be called ‘all mine’ brings deep pride and satisfaction.

However, the National Institute for Literacy points out that many children do not have access to books except through their classroom and school libraries. This is why they encourage caregivers to take on this important role. To summarize, reading with young children as the parent or caregiver is important because it:

With the release of “The King’s Speech,” stuttering has become a topic of conversation unlike anytime I’ve known in the past. Two of the WCATY students that I interviewed for my book on parenting smart kids had been stutterers.

The first is Angie, whom I’ve written about in previous columns. She was born a crack baby. She came to my attention when she scored a perfect 36 on the ACT English test as an eighth grader. It was from her father and eventually her that I learned of her challenging beginnings. By the time she first came to a WCATY program following her eighth grade year in school, there was no sign of a language problem – and who would have expected it from someone whose talent was so clearly language related.

Angie reported, “My father read to me from day one, and I received speech therapy to help overcome stuttering and slower-than-normal language acquisition. I didn’t understand the reason for these early language experiences at the time but they probably explain my affinity for reading and writing. As a preschooler, I learned to read by memorizing the words of book after book, and by age eight my speech problems had been conquered…. spelling and reading became second nature to me. Although Angie has now graduated from college and speaks eloquently, she still reports, “Writing is my bridge between my unspoken thoughts and the world.”

I’ve recently written about Rand’s ADHD. Rand’s second difference is his stutter, which was very noticeable when he was a high schooler attending WCATY programs, yet barely perceptible when I was interviewing him as a Ph.D. candidate. “When I was really young,” he explained, “specialists worked with me. Then my parents were told it was essentially gone, that I no longer needed to work with the speech teacher. My parents believed it and dismissed stuttering as a problem that had been solved. However, occasionally my stutter was still there, and as other students noticed small stuttering and made fun of it, it got worse again. In high school, I again took speech therapy.

“What it comes down to is that I talk too fast. If I consciously slow it down, then I do not stutter. But it takes a very conscious effort, which I really despise because if I’m thinking about slowing down my speech, I’m not thinking about other things (this is the kid whose ADD allows him to process 5 different things at a time – and he loves having this ability). The high school speech therapy did slow down my natural pace, and that’s okay. It doesn’t matter to me whether I slow it down or not. I just don’t want to have to think about slowing it down. It seems ridiculous to use developmental energy to slow down my talking when I could be using that energy in better ways. I feel like it makes me think slower to have to consciously talk slower. But if it’s not happening consciously, how fast I’m talking doesn’t affect my thinking.”

Rand no longer worries about his stuttering as long as no one points it out to him, or unless he becomes stuck on a word for more than five seconds. When I mentioned that I could barely detect a stutter as we were talking, but brought it up because of the palpability of the problem earlier, he explained, “It doesn’t happen anywhere near as often now that I have matured and am more confident about what I am saying. I rarely stutter when I am teaching or giving a speech, and I consciously slow down when I am working one to one with a foreign student.” I don’t think he had consciously slowed down his speech with me, but his confidence and maturity were clearly evidenced in his smooth flow of talking. And this was a confidence in himself, not just in mathematics – his area of expertise.

If a child opens one door of opportunity, other opportunities that otherwise might not have existed will follow. This phenomenon is called “cumulative educational advantage.” It is about never holding a child back in his area of aptitude and interest. It means carefully planning special, supplemental educational experiences, starting early in school and continuing into college, graduate school, and professional life. It means studying deeply and broadly. Early experiences can include summer programs through private institutions and on college campuses; mentorships, apprenticeships, and internships; local, state, national, and international competitions; travel and study at special learning sites within our own country and abroad; distance learning and traditional correspondence courses; dual enrollment between two levels of school, such as high school and college, or early entrance to any level of schooling; and many more possibilities.

Such opportunities should never be viewed as “frosting on the educational cake,” according to the late Julian Stanley, renowned expert on educational acceleration. “Rather,” he writes, “they can be the most important ingredient… things that give you cumulative educational advantage are likely to be the best investments in your education your parents could possibly make” (1994, p. 4).

Harriet Zuckerman (1977) introduced the idea of educational advantage in her study of Nobel laureates in science. Scientists who studied at topnotch institutions and with past laureates had increased potential for becoming leaders in their field and even laureates themselves. She states (p.59-60), “Advantage in science, as in other occupational spheres, accumulates when certain individuals or groups repeatedly receive resources and rewards that enrich the recipients at an accelerated rate and conversely impoverish (relatively) the non recipients.”

Cumulative educational advantage is not about pushing, it is not as simple as graduating early, and it does not always involve being number one. It is about being in the right place at the right time, and usually it does not happen by coincidence. It happens when students are introduced purposefully to concepts, programs, activities, career possibilities, and people, who in turn introduce them to more and more possibilities until the right one clicks. It happens when their learning activities are accelerated in comparison with those of other students of equal ability and motivation. The effects may be multiplicative, because any one opportunity may open the doors to multiple other opportunities.

I just received a note from the mom of a past student of WCATY’s accelerated programs. He had lived and studied for three intensive weeks with the architects of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture as a high school junior . Here’s how cumulative educational advantage worked for this young man when his parents opened a summer door of opportunity:

“At the end of May, he graduated from Harvard University with a Masters in Architecture. He was one of 14 out of 104 students who graduated with distinction. At this time, he is temporarily working at his previous employer, Perkins + Will, in Chicago. On August 1, he will begin employment at Adjaye Associates in Manhattan. Chris is quite thrilled to be with such a creative and world-renowned firm. He loves big city life (after coming from a town of 10,000!), and is looking forward to living and working in New York City.

“We are incredibly proud of Chris, and always tell people that the start of his confidence , determination, and drive came from his experience with WCATY at Taliesin.”

Parents often ask if the money for a special program or class will be well spent; they view it as a hardship (which often it is) instead of an investment (which may ultimately be of higher value). Yet through and since my years of experience in working with smart, motivated kids – matching them to opportunities that interest them – I have accumulated a wealth of stories like Chris’s. This IS the frosting on the cake of my career!

I had the opportunity to spend a week with my youngest grandson. At the end of that week, he went back to preschool following his spring break and I read to his class before heading back home. This classroom and a few others now have my book for the children to enjoy at their leisure. Jordan is the little guy to my left in the photo. The children sitting on the letters on the other side of the rug (as directed by their teachers) are creeping in (as can be seen by the partial child to the right).

I’m thrilled that the book is reaching more and more children with the message that it is cool to be smart. This means that they enter the world of learning knowing that curiosity, exploration of ideas, reading, and thinking are all positive traits or skills for them to develop.